Bluetooth Headsets Guide

A Valiant Endeavor

A Valiant Endeavor

Bluetooth headsets are indispensable. Bluetooth headsets with great audio clarity, now that's a rarity by itself. The new Motorola Endeavor HX1 Bluetooth headset aims to do so with its Bone Conduction technology designed to pick up your speech and filter out the background noise.

A Good Fit

While hooking the HX1 onto your earlobe is a little tricky due to the inflexibility of the ear band, it had a firm fit in our ear canal. Accessing the volume buttons is made easier with a series of raised dots to indicate where the up or down button is. The power button proved to be harder to operate, requiring us to dig in and use our nails to push the slider. Answering a call is made simple with the large press-to-talk button located at the rear of the device, right alongside the microUSB port to charge the HX1.

Less than Audible

Our audio experience with this Bluetooth headset isn't as well-received as we hoped for. We did like how the HX1 provided clear vocal instructions to pair your headset (to more than one device with its multi-point technology) and activate the device's stealth mode. Once we activated the stealth mode, the Bone Conduction technology kicks in, which theoretically taps only your vocal vibrations and converts it into speech. This is all done without the use of a secondary microphone that captures ambient noises and cancels it out accordingly.

Calls that came through to us were delivered with clarity and we caught most of the conversation with minimal noise. We were however oddly informed by our caller that they didn't manage to get a clear signal from us, and audio quality was muffled until it became inaudible.

Rated at up to 7 hours of talk-time, the HX1 did manage to fulfill more than that with almost two days of usage on a full charge.

Final Thoughts

What you need to understand is that the Motorola Endeavor HX1 comes with a great design and remains inconspicuous during usage. It fits comfortably in one's ear and has the mileage for prolonged usage. But, paying a substantial S$259 for a Bluetooth headset that only excels in one aspect, but not the other, arguably more important audio experience, means that it will be a hard sell for Motorola.